Sharing my experiences one stitch at a time.

Marlborough Bra

So my bra making tale begins with the mysterious disappearance of one of the underwires in my white bra. I’d never had an underwire so much as poke out before let alone completely disappear, so I was quite surprised when I went to get dressed and realised I only had half the support required! I took this as a good excuse to foray into bra making (exams/degree are finished now, so I have all the free time in the world!) and make a replacement for my trusty white bra – I can only assume that the underwire is now safely lodged inside my washing machine!

This is the Marlborough bra from Orange Lingerie. It’s made up of a three-part underwired cup and comes in sizes 30A – 40DD. When finding which size to make it suggests adding 4/5 inches to your band measurement which I was a bit suspicious about so measured one of my RTW bras that fits well. This had a measurement of around 25″ around the ribcage whereas my suggested size, 36B, was around my actual ribcage measurement of 31″. Due to this seeming a bit excessive I then measured the 34B pattern and this came up much closer to the 25″ that I know fits, and as this is a sister size to my actual RTW bra size I thought I’d take a shot with it.

The cup and frame fabric is a viscose twill from Plush Addict and the power mesh and crochet trim is from Tia Knight Fabrics. The rest of the bits and bobs required for the bra came from Sewing Chest and in total wasn’t as expensive as I thought it would be, plus I’ve got plenty of the twill and mesh left for future bras in slightly more exciting colours! The construction itself wasn’t as difficult as I thought it’d be either. There are a lot of different steps and all the seams are a rather tiny ¼” but I made friends with my quarter inch foot and took my time to make sure the curves all matched up nicely. My topstitching leaves a little to be desired but as this is partly meant as a toile to see if the pattern fits me I’m not too worried about it.

Slightly NSFW picture coming up!

The good news is the bra actually fits – for something straight from the pattern I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out. The unnerving thing about making a bra is that it’s nigh on impossible to try it on before it’s actually finished so at several points in the construction process I was convinced that my work would be in vain. Fortunately the only fitting issue I can find is that there’s too much fabric at the underarm curve of the power bar (as pictured above). Hopefully this should just be a simple fix of taking a wedge out of the pattern piece as the fit isn’t affected elsewhere because of it. I’ve already ordered a slightly more colourful bra kit in order to make another so I’ll test out my hypothesis then.